Gunsmithing Anschutz 54 tune up

[LRI]

Annie 54's are great little actions. Getting them setup to be a bit more "Merica-ized" with threaded barrel tennons has been a historically accepted upgrade. We had one come in recently and decided to address a few things that have always bugged me about doing this.

The problem: Anschutz 54's use a pair of slave pins driven on the outer radius where the barrel tennon meets the receiver's front ring. Factory barrels are press fit. When threaded the pin holes interrupt the threads. Not a big deal, but it's ugly and there's the small risk of the broken thread going goofy and galling things up.

Late model 54's use a notch between receiver ring and front guard screw as a byproduct of manufacturing. It's how the receiver is positioned when they make it. Older actions had a pair of holes on the ring face, similar to a pinned recoil lug setup on any number of aftermarket actions. The notch is also one more thing for bedding to mess with. I decided to take care of that as well.

Welding and soldering. Two topics that often lead to a great deal of commentary when it applies to actions. First, Anschutz receivers are induction hardened only in the rear where the lug abutment features are made. Older 54's with butterfly safety features were hardened completely. Were only working up front and controlling the amount of heat able to reach the rear is pretty easy. No risk of hurting anything with this job.

I loath using open flame. Few years back I fitted the shop with a portable magnetic induction heater. This is a great tool. No more scorching parts.


Step 1: Fill the holes. Easy, turn some chromoly down and drive em in. Leave some room for solder. A .001" is plenty.

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Step 2: Solder and TIG welding:


Magnetic induction doesn't use a direct flame. Very nice for soldering and controlling the heat is easier (for me anyway).

Edit: Before I get called out on it, the little bench vise seen here has had the jaws pulled off and the knurling has been ground off the jaws. They were then polished. Did this years ago when we started TIG welding bolts. Were not putting knurl marks on people's stuff...


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Step 3: blending the outside: We also zapped the bottom of the pins with the TIG as well to seal it up. You can see the notch filled as well. Notice the lump on the face. That comes off here in a sec when we start threading it.

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Step 4: Lathe work. Nothing too exotic here, just chuck it up, get it running common to the spindle, and go to work. Annies are pretty good on being concentric and parallelism between OD and the front ring. The bolt body hole is offset by about .055" so were working with a shallow hole. Dial it in and go to work. Notice we didn't capture the front ring. Hydraulic chucks can literally squeeze the action hard enough to skew the numbers. Leaving it un supported means there's no bias. We don't want to inadvertently cause thread taper or bell mouth.

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Threaded. 7/8-20. Qualified with a plug gauge and the fit is good. No taper felt on the gauge.

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Step 5: Spot face the top side pins. Easy enough on a 4 axis. Chuck it up, probe it, and bang it out. We actually did this after barreling just to consolidate the work.


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Barreling: We fitted up a practice tennon first to verify our numbers for length. This barrel in particular has a small OD. Only slightly bigger than .900". Fairly common with Anschutz guns. I machined an adapter out of tool steel. (heat treated chromoly) to "sammich" between action and barrel shoulder. The idea is a clean ring to purchase on the shoulder that has surface area against the face of the receiver. Going 1:1 without the collar would almost certainly cause an issue. The threads would have tried to bite the shoulder and clocking would be all over the place. Not good for a gun that ends up fitted with slotted extractor cuts.


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Thanks for looking. I'll post a few more once we get it further along.


C.

 

[Don Briere]

Well done! Excellent write-up.Looking forward to seeing the finish product.

BR

 

[Red_SC]

Impressive, as always. You’re giving me bad ideas about the 54 in my safe...

 

[LRI]

These were cst supplied blanks. I think they were Shillen, but am not sure.

 

[308pirate]

I fucking love well done machining work.